A series of crimes and tragedies in the Occupy movement — a rape in Philadelphia, drug overdoses in Portland and Vancouver, a suicide in Burlington — have led the media to scrutinize our movement more closely and have led the authorities in several cities to use such developments as an attempt to shut it down. […]
Author Archive | Dan La Botz
Cincinnati: First Outsider, First African American Police Chief, a Victory after Decades of Struggle for Racial Justice
Cincinnati’s recent selection of someone who is not white and is not from the West Side of Cincinnati as the city’s new police chief is a victory for justice and civil rights, and a vindication of the efforts of those activists who for decades have struggled against the racism, violence, and abuse that have characterized […]
Blues on the Border: Legendary Rock Guitarist Javier Batiz Plays and Sings for “My Beloved and Beautiful Tijuana”
Javier Batiz, the great Mexican rock-and-roll guitarist, played and sang last week in a concert that embodied and gave voice to everything that is most wonderful about Tijuana and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Batiz, who since he was thirteen has played in the bars and nightclubs of Tijuana, performed this time with the Baja California […]
“March of the Whores”: Women in Mexico March against Sexual Violence
Women in Mexico are marching not only against sexual violence, but also against the excuses for it and the impunity that surrounds it. The “March of the Whores,” as they called it, represents a fresh step in the development of Mexican feminism, taking its cue from an earlier protest held in Canada. Women, men, and […]
Swiss Women and Workers Hold National Day of Action for Wage Equality for Women and Minimum Wage of $4,000 per Month
Swiss women and a major Swiss union held a national day of action today for wage equality for women and for a minimum wage of $4,000 a month for all workers. The Swiss franc and the U.S. dollar are about on par, the franc worth a little more than a U.S. dollar. The new minimum […]
The New American Workers Movement at the Crossroads
The new American workers movement, which has developed so rapidly in the last couple of months in the struggle against right-wing legislative proposals to abolish public employee unions, suddenly finds itself at a crossroads. Madison, Wisconsin, where rank-and-file workers, community members, and social movement activists converged to create the new movement, remains the center of […]
The New American Workers Movement and the Confrontation to Come
The new American workers movement — born in the last few weeks in the giant protests in Wisconsin and Ohio — faces a fateful confrontation this week. In Madison and Columbus, Republican legislators are pushing to abolish public employee labor unions and tens of thousands of workers are protesting and resisting. We have seen nothing […]
A New American Workers Movement Has Begun
Thousands of workers demonstrated at the state capital in Madison, Wisconsin on Feb. 15 and 16 to protest plans by that state’s Republican Governor Scott Walker to take away the state workers’ union rights. Walker cleverly attempted to divide the public workers by excluding police and firefighters from his anti-union law, and the media have […]
Unions Representing Workers in Canada, Mexico, and U.S. Explore Merger
The merger would create an international union of one million metal workers and miners. The United Steelworkers (USW), which represents 850,000 workers in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, and the National Union of Miners and Metal Workers (SNTMMSRM), known as the Mineros, which represents 180,000 workers in Mexico, have announced plans to explore […]
Mexican Electrical Workers Union Changes Strategy in Face of Calderón Government’s Intransigence
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) continues its fight for its members’ jobs and for the union itself, but now, two months since President Felipe Calderón’s liquidation of the state-owned Light and Power Company, seizure of the facilities, and firing of the 44,000 workers, and faced with the government’s intransigence, the union has been forced […]
Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights for Its Life
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for its life. The union’s struggle has rallied allies in the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and solidarity from throughout the country and around the world, but, if […]
Mexican Government Seizes Power Plants, Liquidates Company, Fires Workers, Union in Jeopardy
Mexican Federal Police last night and early this morning seized the plants of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico (LyF) which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico. The government of President Felipe Calderón also announced the liquidation of the company, the termination of the workers, and thereby the […]
Mexican Government Prepares to Seize Mexico City Power Plants to Break Power of Electrical Workers Union
The Mexican Preventive Police (PFP) are preparing to occupy the facilities of the Central Light and Power Company in Mexico City in an attempt to break the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), according to a union press release. The union warns that the quasi-military occupation of the plants could come within a week. The […]
The Decline of Manufacturing and Machine Tools, and the Future of American Industry and the Working Class
The U.S. economy continued in a deep recession and hopes for a rapid recovery faded as new national unemployment figures of 9.5 percent were announced early this month. If one includes discouraged workers and the underemployed (those with part-time jobs who would like full-time work) in the calculations, then the figure soars to 16.5 percent. […]
The PRI’s Election Victory: A New Political Era in Mexico
Back to the past — and with a landslide. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which for 70 years, from 1928 to 2000, ruled Mexico as a one-party state won a decisive victory in the mid-term elections on July 5. The PRI’s victory represented a defeat both for the conservative economic and social policies of President […]
Mexico: As July Elections Approach, Voters Apathetic, Cynical
What a change from three years ago. Then Mexico’s left was on the march, from the resistance of the teachers and people in Oaxaca City to the mass demonstrations in Mexico City for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). In 2006, Local 22 of the Mexican Teachers Union […]
May Day Protests Cancelled by Swine Flu (H1N1) As Mexican Workers Face Yet Another Crisis
In Mexico, May Day, the international labor holiday, has been cancelled for the first time in the country’s history. All of the major federations — the government-backed, conservative, and often corrupt “official” unions of the Congress of Labor (CT) as well as the independent National Union of Workers (UNT) and Mexican Union Front (FSM) — […]
Evolution of the Mexican State
The Mexican state appears to be changing, leading a number of Mexican intellectuals to speculate on the nature of the change. This is not simply a question of Mexico becoming a “failed state,” about which there has been much speculation, but rather an attempt to theorize the evolution of the Mexican state at this moment. […]
The Obama Stimulus — A View from Cincinnati, Ohio
People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them. Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming. Help for the banks and […]
AFL-CIO Supports Nationalizing the Banks: But Who Will Control and Run Them?
The AFL-CIO has announced that it now supports nationalizing the nation’s banks rather than continuing to spend billions of dollars in repeated efforts to restore them to solvency. The American labor federation, which represents 10 million workers, released a draft statement expected to be approved by its executive council today stating, “We believe the debate […]
